Recording Your Music on a Budget

Nothing is cheap these days. With everything rising in price and bands in general still getting paid relatively lowly it’s worth having an idea of how you can make the most of your resources to get your music out in the world.

Practice

Before you go anywhere near recording I can’t stress enough to be as tight as possible (musically, but if necessarily financially..). Everyone should know their parts off by heart and be able to play them fluently all together and on their own.

Record demos, even just using a voice notes app. When you can listen back and hold your head high, that’s when it’s time to start recording in earnest. Modern recording technology can fix a lot of fluffs but it’s certainly best to put yourself in the best position beforehand.

Decision Time

To make the most of your recording time it’s also massively beneficial to have the song and arrangement completely nailed down.

This includes solos and other peripheral bits. Granted, there’s something special about an improvised bit of Studio magic but it’s not something you can expect to happen. Have a planned, worked out and rehearsed solo you can record first then if there’s time, experiment as much as your wallet can handle.

The same goes for vocals. Try out any harmony or be ideas before the session to keep it easy and quick. Don't just expect to turn up on the day and create Queen level layers of vocals as it's often a huge time drain.

Look After Yourself

Rock and roll is all well and good, but when you’ve got 8hrs to record a song or two you need to be fresh and ready to go. You don’t want to be looking for a band member who’s rough as toast. I can’t even imagine the torture a click track would be to a hungover drummer….

Also remember that the voice is a muscle if you’ve been up all night shouting in a club or drinking loads you won’t be at the best either. And do some warm ups beforehand to really get you in the swing of things.

Pay Attention

Once your part is down and you feel it's good, that's only the start. Make sure to have a really good listen and dial in to address any issues while everything is set up. Once parts are confirmed and you've moved on to the next bit it's a lot harder to go back and fix any issues with the drum performance, for example. It can more than often be done, but not without more time being spend than would have been if it was addressed initially.

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DIY and That

There’s a lot to be said about getting into a big Studio for your recording masterpiece, however the economics of that can be a bit tricky for those without a surplus of cash.

Luckily, there’s a wealth of reasonably affordable equipment to get you started recording and a lot of good information out there to get you on your way.

Most consumer equipment by a known brand is at worst useable, although I’d steer well clear of the unbranded / copy / Temu type stuff as it’s usually poor quality.

A lot of the consumer or prosumer equipment from, say Behringer, Aston, Audix, Lewitt, SE electronics or any of the other major brands can be surprisingly good. A lot of the time the difference is in build and quality control.

Another bonus is that most bands have at least one member legitimately interested in sound and recording. A volunteer for hours of unpaid dicking round on GarageBand.

Getting a basic setup over a period of time shouldn’t break the bank if you’re getting regular gigs and someone in the band is actually decent at recording and / or mixing. The mixing and mastering can always be done elsewhere and you’ll have still saved money!

Pitfalls to this is that there can be an amount of shared equipment built up so if the band goes its separate ways it could become acrimonious, the person handling recording can be overly focused on the recording and the band side of things could suffer or you never finish anything due to the potential for endless tinkering.

There is, however, another way.

The Hybrid Approach

There's nothing stopping you playing to your strengths. If you have a small setup, get the drums done in a studio and record the guitars and vocals yourselves. If you can mix, mix it yourselves. Use any combination of ideas to get the project across the line. It might take a bit longer as you learn and improve but it can be cost effective in the long run and also give you more time to nail the arrangement exactly how you want it.

The thing to be wary of here, though, is the potential to spend way more time than you need on things tweaking away and never actually finishing anything. Finding time and space to work on your epic production can also become challenging, especially if you have a family or housemates.

You can purchase basic equipment to get the job done relatively affordably, especially if you're just doing an instrument at a time. For a guitar, an SM57, 1 or 2 channel audio interface, mic lead and stand will set you back less than £200 - and that's for all good quality equipment.

The SM57 will work fine on vocals, too. If you want to try a quality budget condenser mic you could do worse than an Audio Technica AT2020 or Lewitt LCT240 - both of which cost less than £100.

Also most (if not all) USB audio interfaces will work on a phone or tablet now and there's a lot of apps which can record multi-track audio on iOS and other operating systems so you don't necessarily need to invest in expensive hardware to get a start.

It's definitely worth investing in some bits of recording equipment yourself to at least do demos and get a feel for what you can do with it.

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In Summary

There's many ways to be "cash efficient" when recording.

• Know what you want

• Be well rehearsed

• Arrive in good time and good condition for sessions

• Consider DIY recording (but don't spend a fortune on kit)

• Consider hybrid recording (get difficult or complex things done by someone else, do what you can yourself)

Basically it's always a case of using whatever you have available to get the best result you can. Don't let a lack of resource stop you from getting on with perfecting your art, but also getting it out in front of people. Some of the must successful records out there have been recorded in wood cabins, on phones, on 4-tracks or in hallways on rudimentary kit. Lots haven't, too but that's where you need to find the balance and accept your limitations.

thanks for reading and happy music making,

Foll